I went on a cycling trip to Australia in Spring 2016. I was to land in Melbourne and had tentatively thought of doing a Melbourne to Adelaide Cycling circuit. One obvious route between these two cities is the coastal one including the great ocean road. I plotted another more northern route which I thought would give me a taste of the Outback without making it too serious because I was still a newbie in bike touring.

As it happened however, that Spring was a lot wetter, colder and of course windier than planned. There were severe weather warnings from the MET bureau every few days – they are really proactive! I started off from Melbourne to Bendigo (Atisha Buddhist Centre) and then to Inglewoods on this route but at Inglewoods there was flooding everywhere. And at one point the rains came down so hard that my entire tent flooded. Thankfully I managed to salvage my sleeping gear before it got wet. And the lovely motel folks offered me their empty caravan. So this when I started changing my plans and finally I cycled about 300 km around Melbourne. Deliberately keeping close to bigger towns for two reasons,
1) in case of really bad weather I could get to a train station and so to Melbourne
2) Budget accommodations i.e. AirBnb or even hostels were available only in bigger towns

This is the summary of the trip that finally happened. And it was a great trip, I really enjoyed, met amazing people. I learnt so much about cycling and camping in this kind of weather. I also FINALLY learnt gears on the bike and attempted (and managed with difficulty) a seriously hilly stretch too. 🙂

But here was my tentative route if anyone is planning something similar 🙂

Melbourne to Adelaide Cycling Circuit Route Map